Less than a week? Whaaat?

Isn’t that crazy?! I have only 5 full days left in China—its nuts to think how fast this has gone by! Sorry for the lack of post yesterday. I hate to keep bringing this up, but the weather the past 4 days has been nasty: cloudy and raining on and off. At first I kind of liked the constant mist hitting my face, but now it is starting to bother me. Weather.com promises me that tomorrow is going to be sunny with a high of 84° (yeah, we’ll see…); but with nasty weather I don’t get to do all too much, so I saved things from Monday and Tuesday in this post.

This past Monday was the Dragon Boat Festival in China! Now, I’m not exactly sure what it is, but from what I gathered it seems to be a big canoe race where different countries compete and their canoes happen to have a dragons head on the front. Sounds like a good enough excuse for a holiday. Due to the dragon boat festival, lots of people were out and about Monday (in the thick of the rain). Starbucks, one of my top rain locations, was very crowded thanks to the mess of the holiday and the weather.

At night the rain had stopped, and I went venturing into a new part in town, and I was surprised to see, when I got there, buildings with Chinese architecture! After seeing plenty of European styled buildings and skyscrapers, I had begun to think that Shanghai wasn’t that Chinese…

Tuesday was much like Monday. I spent a little time in Sbux in the morning, and when the weather started cooperating I went out adventuring again. In a previous post, I uploaded a photo of a section of buildings with some crazy looking sculptures and colors. It looked to intriguing that I went and checked it out. These sections of buildings were brand spanking new, had no body in them, and apparently closed to the public. After walking around for 5 minutes and snapping some pictures, a nice policeman came up to me and pointed towards some stairs that I should take to go back to the main roads—out of the building complex. I was glad I was able to see a lot of the buildings though—they were futuristic with the glass panels, colors, and weird architecture on the front end of the building.

 (The front end glass panels)

Road Rage? How about Restaurant Rage: As I was walking through a mall today, my attention couldn’t help but get sucked in by this scene a man was making at the McDonalds counter. Now I shouldn’t be one to judge because I don’t know his background or his family’s, but he had taken the kids toy from his daughter’s happy meal and threw it on the ground. His little girl, probably about 5 years old, picks up the toy. The father then shouts something in Chinese (or maybe he was just talking in Chinese, they always sound like they are shouting…), takes the toy from her hand, and throws it out of the McDonalds. Out of the McDonalds! All the employees and everyone around were just frozen. He then stormed out of the McDonalds and his wife and daughter followed. The phrase making a scene just doesn’t due this story justice. When he had left, I went and asked one of the workers what had happened. She then told me that the daughter wanted to trade in her toy for a different one, but they ran out of the other kinds of toys and only had that. The father, disgusted that McDonalds didn’t have a variety of toys, threw the toy on the ground and out of the store. He must’ve been having a bad day.

On my adventure walk I saw plenty of interesting little shops and eateries including a “Chinese Muslim Restaurant” (yes, there is such a thing as Muslim food…I had no idea…) and “Teh Outlet of Shanghai Tobacco Sales Network” , and no that wasn’t a spelling error.

(ze Russians?)

I saw a wedding couple taking pictures on the bridge…I wanted to take a picture but I didn’t want to seem like a creep, so I did it from far away. But now that I think about it, it’s probably creepier that I took it from far away. I digress.

(Wearing red--not white)

I now know the power of saying “You’ve got to grab the bull by the horns” (in this case, just horn).

I wish that there were a lot more tourist attractions in Shanghai like there were in Beijing, but once you’ve seen the main things in Shanghai that’s kind of it—it is a city where business thrives and where you get work done. I have been more than happy spending time with God on the boardwalks and pulling out my bible in Starbucks. I have actually seen a couple Chinese people pull out their Bibles in Starbucks and read; pretty cool stuff! Tomorrow or Friday (depending on her commitment tomorrow) I’ll be meeting up with one of Jon Getz’s friends that lives here in shanghai, and hopefully we can do some cool stuff together.

Over and out.

-Alex